PHP error tracking
Know when your PHP app breaks, before your users do
ForgeOps connects the errors your PHP app reports to the deploys, traces, and changes around them, so when production breaks, the incident already says who's affected, what changed, and where to look.
Laravel and Symfony integrations report every unhandled request exception automatically. Running on ForgeOps' own dedicated infrastructure, so nothing about a PHP app's errors or its users' data gets routed through a third-party error-tracking vendor. See an incident investigated →
Install
composer require forge-ops/tracker require 'vendor/autoload.php'; use ForgeOps\Tracker\ForgeOpsTracker; ForgeOpsTracker::init(dsn: 'https://<api_key>@getforgeops.net/api/v1/events');
Laravel and Symfony integrations report every unhandled request exception automatically.
Every client reports the same shape
Wherever it comes from, an event arrives with an exception class, a message, and a backtrace, plus whatever environment/release/server context that client can gather on its own. ForgeOps fingerprints and groups on the first three, so a PHP app's issues list works exactly the same way every other language's does: report the same bug a thousand times and it's still one row, not a thousand.
No agent, no sidecar: it's a plain HTTPS POST to ForgeOps' own ingestion API, so nothing about a PHP app's traffic gets routed through a third-party pipeline first.
Works with your framework
The PHP client hooks in at the framework level, not by wrapping individual calls, so nothing about how you already write PHP code has to change.
Laravel
A service provider hooks the framework's own exception handler automatically.
Symfony
An event subscriber listens for kernel.exception, ahead of Symfony's own error page. APP_ENV=prod sends; dev doesn't.
Plain PHP
A single set_exception_handler call covers anything else.
What it looks like
The issue list
Every PHP issue reported into a project shows up here: title, status, assignee, event count, and when it was last seen, the same columns as any other language's project.
The issue detail
Every occurrence keeps its own timestamp, environment, release, and server, plus the backtrace exactly as PHP reported it, expandable per occurrence rather than flattened into one generic stack.
Alerting
A new PHP issue, a regression, or a spike past a threshold you set can reach Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, or a generic webhook, configured per project, per trigger.
Heartbeats
For the failure mode error tracking can't see on its own: a PHP cron job or recurring task that's supposed to run but silently stopped. Each heartbeat gets its own ping URL and its own grace period before it alerts.
Background jobs
init() also installs a set_exception_handler() wrapper by default, covering a script or an Artisan command that crashes outright.
Laravel's own queue:work and Symfony Messenger's worker never let a failing job reach it though: both catch the job's exception themselves, to record it and keep processing the queue. Laravel's Queue::failing() (Symfony has WorkerMessageFailedEvent) needs wiring instead:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Queue;
Queue::failing(function ($event) {
$job = $event->job->resolveName();
ForgeOpsTracker::captureException(
$event->exception,
['job' => $job]
);
});
Release health
Once your app is reporting into ForgeOps, every request through the Laravel middleware or Symfony listener also counts as a session: crash-free unless an unhandled exception (or a 5xx response) actually affects it. That gives each release's row on a project's Releases page a real crash-free rate, not just an event count. On by default. Unlike the other language clients, each request delivers its own checkin rather than an aggregate flushed on a timer, since a typical PHP request has no persistent process to aggregate counts in; deferred past the response the same way event delivery already is. Requires a plan that includes release health; on a plan that doesn't, the checkins are accepted but not recorded (the response says why), so a working setup never looks broken.
ForgeOpsTracker::init(
dsn: '...',
trackSessions: false, // opt out entirely
);
Performance monitoring
Once the Laravel middleware or Symfony listener below is registered, every request also reports its own duration as "<HTTP method> <route>" (e.g. "GET users/{id}" for Laravel, the route name for Symfony), not the raw path, so a distinct user id doesn't explode into its own separate transaction. Same one-request-per-report design as release health above, for the identical reason: no persistent process to aggregate across many requests in. Requires a plan that includes performance monitoring; on a plan that doesn't, the reports are accepted but not recorded (the response says why), so a working setup never looks broken. Each report also carries a small latency histogram, so ForgeOps shows an approximate p50/p95/p99 per transaction, not just an average, accurate to the width of the latency bucket a duration falls into.
->withMiddleware(function (Middleware $middleware) {
$middleware->prepend(ForgeOpsTrackerPerformanceMiddleware::class); // Laravel
})
// Symfony: register ForgeOpsTrackerPerformanceListener the same way as the exception listener
ForgeOpsTracker::init(
dsn: '...',
trackPerformance: false, // opt out entirely
);
Distributed tracing
Once the Laravel middleware or Symfony listener is registered, each request becomes a trace, and under Laravel every database query nests in as its own span. Only a slow request's trace is ever sent: whether it crossed the threshold (one second by default, configurable) is decided entirely inside your process, so a fast request costs nothing over the wire. Add anything else by hand. Requires a plan that includes distributed tracing.
$order = ForgeOpsTracker::span('charge card', fn () => $gateway->charge($id), 'service', ['order' => $id]);
ForgeOpsTracker::span('fetch rates', fn () => $http->get($url), 'http');
// Something you timed yourself (kind is one of controller/service/database/redis/http/job/other):
ForgeOpsTracker::recordSpan('SELECT orders', 'database', $startedAt, $durationMs); // $startedAt is microtime(true)
Errors now carry the request they happened in: its endpoint (POST /checkout) and its trace id. An issue names its affected endpoint, each occurrence links to its exact trace, and a request that fails is always traced, however fast. Under Laravel or Symfony, a request that arrives with the standard traceparent header continues the caller's trace on its own; pass it on by wrapping an outbound call in httpSpan, which records it as an http span and hands you the headers to add, with any HTTP client. Once the projects are linked in ForgeOps an error shows the errors another project raised in the same request. Needs tag v0.4.0.
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;
$response = ForgeOpsTracker::httpSpan('POST', $url, fn (array $headers) => Http::withHeaders($headers)->post($url, $order));
ForgeOpsTracker::init(
dsn: '...',
tracePropagationTargets: ['api.example.com'], // only these hosts; null (the default) means all
);
SQL in a request
When the request an issue failed in was traced, the issue opens with its slowest query: how long it took, its share of the request's time, how many queries the request ran, and a likely N+1 warning when the same statement ran five or more times. Every query the Laravel middleware records already carries its SQL, masked so every string and number becomes a question mark and bindings are never sent. Turn on explain_slow_queries and a slow SELECT on PostgreSQL gets its plan too, shown beside the query with any sequential scan over a large table pointed out; it runs plain EXPLAIN, never EXPLAIN ANALYZE, and only for a single plain SELECT, off the request on its own connection inside a read-only transaction with a two second timeout, at most once per statement every ten minutes. Needs tag v0.6.0; plans need a plan that includes performance monitoring.
// Laravel: ForgeOpsTrackerPerformanceMiddleware already records each query's masked SQL.
ForgeOpsTracker::init(
dsn: '...',
explainSlowQueries: true, // default false; pgsql connections only
explainThresholdMs: 500, // milliseconds; default 500
);
What changed
A feature flag flip or a config edit can break things with no deploy at all. Record one with recordChange and it shows under What changed on any issue that starts in the next two hours, and on the project's Changes page beside your deploys, labeled potentially relevant, never as the cause. Changes between deploys are detected for you: after init(), the PHP version and every installed Composer package are sent once per change on each host (a small marker file keeps PHP-FPM from sending them on every request), after the response has gone out. Environment variable names (never values) are opt-in. Needs tag v0.5.0, on a plan that includes change tracking.
ForgeOpsTracker::init(
dsn: getenv('FORGE_OPS_DSN'),
detectChanges: true, // the default; false sends no snapshot
trackEnvVarNames: true, // default false; names only, never values
);
ForgeOpsTracker::recordChange(
'feature_flag',
'gateway_retry_v2 turned on for 100% of checkouts',
['flag' => 'gateway_retry_v2', 'from' => '10%', 'to' => '100%'],
actor: 'priya@example.com',
);
Custom metrics and infrastructure monitoring
Track a business event you name yourself (a signup, a payment) or a reading from one of your own hosts, with one explicit call each; nothing is automatic. The value defaults to 1, so a bare call is a counter; pass a real amount for anything else (it can be negative, for a refund). A captured value is stored as its own row, so counts and sums you compute later are exact. Calls are buffered and flushed as one batch in the background, so they are safe to make inside a request, and flushMetrics sends whatever is buffered right now. The hostname of an infrastructure reading defaults to the configured server name. Requires a plan that includes custom metrics and infrastructure monitoring.
ForgeOpsTracker::captureMetric('signup'); // value defaults to 1.0: a bare counter
ForgeOpsTracker::captureMetric('payment', 49.0); // a real magnitude; it may be negative (a refund)
ForgeOpsTracker::captureInfrastructureMetric('cpu', 0.42); // hostname defaults to serverName
ForgeOpsTracker::captureInfrastructureMetric('disk', 0.81, 'db-1');
ForgeOpsTracker::flushMetrics(); // optional: send right now
Database errors
When an error comes from a database call, the issue shows which stored procedure, table or view its SQL touched, so you know where to start looking. Laravel's QueryException and Doctrine DBAL's DriverException carry the statement, so it's read off them, or off the exception they wrap, with nothing to add. A raw PDOException carries none. The names are sent by default and are identifiers, never values. The SQL statement itself is opt-in, with every string and number replaced by a question mark before it leaves your app, and a project setting can stop ForgeOps storing the statement at all.
// Opt in to also sending the masked statement (default false). ForgeOpsTracker::init(dsn: '...', captureSqlStatement: true); // captureSqlObjects: false stops even the names (default true)
Questions
Do I need to change how I already handle errors?
Almost never. Every client hooks the framework's own exception handling directly, the same way the install snippet above shows, so your own logs, error pages, and rescue blocks keep working exactly as they did before, and ForgeOps just also finds out about it. The one common exception is a background-job runner that doesn't forward through that same mechanism on its own; that needs one small hook added instead, not a change to anything already there.
Where does the data actually go?
Straight to ForgeOps' own ingestion API over plain HTTPS. No agent, no sidecar, and no third-party ingestion service in between, so nothing about your app's traffic or its users' data gets routed through anyone else's pipeline first.
What happens if the same bug fires a thousand times?
It's fingerprinted from its exception class, message, and backtrace, so a thousand reports of the same bug still show up as one issue with an event count of 1,000, not a thousand separate rows to dig through. And a runaway loop can't use up your monthly event quota: once one issue repeats faster than your plan's hourly limit (50 an hour on Free), further repeats are still counted, and still count toward spike alerts, but they aren't stored or charged to your quota.
Is anything scrubbed before it's stored?
Yes. Emails, credit card numbers, and known API key/token formats are redacted out of every event before it's even written, on every plan, with room for per-project custom field names on top of the defaults.
Try it with your own PHP app
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